ARM’s new chips will come with 3.5x performance boost

ARM holdings, the company behind the mobile processor architecture that powers the iPhone and iPad, unveiled its next generation processor blueprints today that it says will increase performance three fold compared to its current designs.

The new Cortex-A72 chips aimed at smartphone and tablets will make their debut next year — just in time for the iPhone 7 — and also use 75% less power while maintaining the same level of performance as today’s ARM processors, paving the way for thinner, more powerful iPhones in the future.

One of the biggest benefits of the new A72 chips is Apple devices will finally be able to handle complex computing like voice analysis for Siri without having to connect to the Internet, according to ARM’s VP of marketing, Nandan Nayampally. The A72 chips boasts 50 times the computing power compared to mobile processors from five years ago.

ARM’s performance gains come curtesy of changes made to the chip design, while some improvements are due to advances in the production 16-nanometer transistors by manufacturers like TSMC. ARM also announced its updated is Mali graphics technology and the layer than connects the different parts of the processor together.

Rather than manufacturing its own processors like Intel, ARM licenses its chip designs to mobile makers include Apple, Samsung and Qualcomm, who then use the technology for their own processors, such as the new A8 processor. ARM says its already licensed the new chip design to 10 firms, including Rockchop and Mediatek.